I’m an information fiend. I keep news radio on constantly. (Not the kind of endless opinionated pontificating that we call talk radio though. That stuff drives me crazy.) I like information about quantum physics and I like information about politics and I like information about wars and I like information about art. I like information about history and human nature and psychology and music and engineering and finance and economics and philosophy and law and biology and theology. I eat this stuff up. I feel like the books on my shelf almost audibly hum with promise because they have the potential to teach me new things.

For people who love information, this is a good time to be alive. One estimate says there are something like 14 billion pages on the internet. That’s a lot of information. And this study says that you can get from any one of those 14 billion pages to any other of the 13,999,999,999 pages in 19 clicks or less. That is some serious information access.

Sometimes people or companies act like information differentiates them. I remember seeing an ad for some company that allows you to be a do-it-yourself stock trader at home, and it showed a guy in his home office with two computer monitors, the displays packed with charts and graphs and tickers. The gist of the ad was that this company could provide you with a lot of information and therefore make you a better stock trader. All of that information is what makes that company’s product valuable. Supposedly.

But I don’t know if information sets anyone apart in a world where so many people have access to so much information.